SLES installation

This guide describes the fastest way to install Graylog on SLES 12 SP3. All links and packages are present at the time of writing but might need to be updated later on.

Prerequisites

The following patterns are required for a minimal setup (see SLES 12 SP3 Deployment Guide):

- Base System
- Minimal System (Appliances)
- YaST configuration packages

Assuming a minimal setup, you have to install the Java runtime environment:

sudo zypper install java-<version_number>-openjdk

MongoDB

Installing MongoDB on SLES should follow the tutorial for SLES from the MongoDB documentation. Add the GPG key and the repository before installing MongoDB:

sudo rpm --import https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.3.asc
sudo zypper addrepo --gpgcheck "https://repo.mongodb.org/zypper/suse/12/mongodb-org/4.3/x86_64/" mongodb
sudo zypper -n install mongodb-org

In order to automatically start MongoDB on system boot, you have to activate the MongoDB service by running the following commands:

sudo chkconfig mongod on
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart mongod.service

Elasticsearch

Graylog can be used with Elasticsearch 7.x, please follow the installation instructions from the Elasticsearch installation guide.

First install the Elastic GPG key with rpm --import https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch then add the repository file /etc/zypp/repos.d/elasticsearch.repo with the following contents:

[elasticsearch-7.x]
name=Elasticsearch repository for 7.x packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/oss-7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

followed by the installation of the latest release with sudo zypper install elasticsearch-oss.

Make sure to modify the Elasticsearch configuration file (/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml) and set the cluster name to graylog and uncomment action.auto_create_index: false to enable the action:

sudo tee -a /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml > /dev/null <<EOT
cluster.name: graylog
action.auto_create_index: false
EOT

In order to automatically start Elasticsearch on system boot, you have to activate the Elasticsearch service by running the following commands:

sudo chkconfig elasticsearch on
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart elasticsearch.service

Graylog

First install the Graylog GPG Key with rpm --import https://packages.graylog2.org/repo/debian/keyring.gpg then add the repository file /etc/zypp/repos.d/graylog.repo with the following content:

[graylog]
name=graylog
baseurl=https://packages.graylog2.org/repo/el/stable/4.3/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-graylog

After that, install the latest release with:

sudo zypper install graylog-server graylog-enterprise-plugins graylog-integrations-plugins graylog-enterprise-integrations-plugins.

Make sure to follow the instructions in your /etc/graylog/server/server.conf and add password_secret and root_password_sha2. These settings are mandatory and without them, Graylog will not start!

You can use the following command to create your password_secret:

cat /dev/urandom | base64 | cut -c1-96 | head -1

You need to use the following command to create your root_password_sha2:

echo -n "Enter Password: " && head -1 </dev/stdin | tr -d '\n' | sha256sum | cut -d" " -f1

To be able to connect to Graylog you should set http_bind_address to the public host name or a public IP address of the machine you can connect to. More information about these settings can be found in Configuring the web interface.

The last step is to enable Graylog during the operating system’s startup:

$ sudo chkconfig graylog-server on
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl start graylog-server.service

The next step is to ingest messages into your new Graylog Cluster and extract the messages with extractors or use the Pipelines to work with the messages.

Cluster Setup

If you plan to have multiple servers assuming different roles in your cluster like we have in this big production setup you need to modify only a few settings. This is covered in our Multi-node Setup guide. The default file location guide lists the locations of the files you need to modify.